What is the best method for accessing a pc's desktop remotley ? It is a single machine on a wireless network?

Question

Ok VNC won't work because its behind NAT eg 192. address..
Is VPN an option?

My wireless router has the public IP ? hmmm confused

yes ragingmk I do have permission to access the pc because it is mine ;-) Basically I want to access it from work without having to any pay for these html subscription things.

Eg. https://www.gotomypc.com/bPricingPopUp.tmpl?SessionInfo=175578998:214AED83E2FAF6B

Answer 1

Ok, here's the deal. VNC will work, but you need to be able to connect to some computer directly and your router / firewall is in the way. So...what you need to do is "poke a hole in your swiss cheese (firewall). In the non-cheese analogy, it means you need to set up a port forward in your router.

If you use a program like RAdmin from famatech.com, it usually uses port 4899, Ultra VNC from ultravnc.sourceforge.net usually defaults to 5900 or 5901. Make sure you go on your computer and look at the remote access software, either set the port to one of the above (in reality it can be any port that isn't in use) or write down which port you are going to use. If it is ultravnc, it might have a default screen number instead of a port, if it does, just write down the screen number instead of the port.

Now you need to ensure that your computer has a static IP address. If you are using DHCP, this can be problematic as a restart might change the computers IP address and then your port forward won't work. So go into the network properties and assign your computer an address like 192.168.1.200 This will ensure that your computer does not get its address stolen as it is really high in the DHCP pool. Your router will have to assign 199 addresses before it trys to steal this computers IP. If you need instructions on this, you can find them on yahoo.

Now with that port number set and in hand, open up a web browser and go to your router web console, usually located at 192.168.1.100 or 192.168.1.1 (sometimes it is 192.168.1.254 with 2wire home gateways), or whathever you may have set it to. If in doubt, run ipconfig at a dos prompt and look at the line "gateway" and use that IP address.

In the router settings, find the section for port forwarding. You can easily search on the internet if you can't find it on your own. It might be under advanced properties on a linksys router.

Now what we need to do is designate a public port for your public IP. SO when a request on port 5901 or 4899 comes in on your public ip maybe 72.169.87.1:4899, it will forward that request to an your computer running on 192.168.1.200 on port 4899.

So source port 4899, destination ip 192.168.1.200, destination port 4899. Where 4899 is whatever port you have set in your RAdmin or ultravnc software.

Then enable the forward (assuming you have a linksys router and save the configuration. The router may restart.

Now if you have two computers, give this a try while you are sitting in front of the computer running VNC. Install the VNC viewer on your other computer. Enter in your public ip, ie: 72.69.74.222 followed by the port. If you have your VNC set up to use a screen it might be 72.69.74.222:0 or 1, if you want it to go to the 5900 port you have to use to colons, 72.69.74.222::5901. Then give it a whirl, if your destination computer has a firewall, it will almost certainly freak out when VNC tries to connect the first time, just click allow. This may disconnect your first attempt, so give it another try. It should work ;-)

If it doesn't, try to connect on 192.168.1.200::5901. If it works, then you know your port forward isn't properly set up. In that case you have to go back to the router properties and double check it.

This should work, I do it all the time. I have a web server that listens on 80, samba file server on 5999, ssh server to a linux box on 22, and vnc on 5901.

Be careful about using VNC though, make sure you give your VNC server a password...otherwise anyone can get in ;-)

If for some reason you are in an environment where you can't download software on the computer you want to view your home computer, you can try to set up the web VNC which is java based and included in ultravnc, but it is very buggy. In this case, you may want to look into the less secure, but very functional Remote Desktop. This requires you to go into your control panel (under system I think, and on the remote connections tab, you need to allow remote connections. Then you need to search on yahoo to find the ports that are required. I know there are two, one transmits audio and the other one transmits video, you can enable both. Then as long as your client at work (lets say) is running XP, you go under Start -> all programs -> accessories -> system tools - > Remote Desktop. Then just type in your IP address and click connect. If you don't see the option listed you can search on yahoo for the direct run command, might be something like tsmmc.msc and hit enter, this may work to bring up the connection dialog.

Once you have it working, keep an eye on your public IP as if your are running DSL at home, the IP is bound to change once or twice a month. What you can do though is get a free service from http://www.dyndns.com called "Dynamic DNS". This will map a hostname like mycomputerathome.dyndns.org. Then you install the DynDNS update agent from:

http://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/

Set this updater up on your computer and set up your DynDNS account in it, then tell it to update at a reasonable interval...maybe every 20 minutes. Then if your public IP changes, in 20 minutes the DynDNS updater will update your hostname and you'll be back in business.

In this case you would connect from vnc using myhomecomputer.dyndns.org::5901 in the VNC viewer.

Anyways, I hope this helps

PS: As for a VPN, it would only complicate things as you still need to do a port forward in your router for the VPN connection, otherwise the VPN client request won't reach the server.

This is a nice idea if you want to REALLY be secure, but products like openVPN take hours to set up as you need to set up a CA and sign your certificates for the client. Regardless of the VPN though, you would still need software like VNC to view your remote desktop, so I'd skip the VPN for now.

Answer 2

Actually my best bet is for you to use VNC and have your rotuer configure so that when you are at work, you connect to your router ip and it forwards it to your internet network(192.*.*.*). This method is call port forwarding. All it takes is the following steps:
1)Install VNC on your desktop
2) Login to your router to setup port forwarding from your public ip to your internal ip. (If you need help at this step, please check http://portforward.com/ its really the BEST place to get info on router configuration)

An alternative is to setup a virtual private networking (VPN). The best option i suggest is to use Hamachi. http://www.hamachi.cc
It installs as a software on your PCs and creates an VPN between them. Its almost zero configuration. Very EASY to use. Highly recommended if the above fails. And its very secure too.

Hope it helps.

Answer 3

Most wireless routers have a feature called port forwarding -- it's often under the firewall settings. It lets you specify a port number or port range and which LAN address should receive it.

Answer 4

Hey there,
Get one of the latest versions of Radmin. Free link http://bitly.com/1k4h3yj
It's the best choice.

Answer 5

If your system does not have a wireless card - installing a usb adapter will sort you out

Answer 6

Do you have permission to access this PC remotely?

Answer 7

buy the issue of micro mart magazine that goes on sale on 8th feb. it has a feature on remote pc's

Answer 8

i dont know but there is this program called Citrix: Program Neighborhood.....or somthing like that and i use it to acsess my schools network